It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, April 28, 2025
Modeling reemergence of vaccine-eliminated infectious diseases under declining vaccination in the US
Based on estimates from this modeling study, declining childhood vaccination rates will increase the frequency and size of outbreaks of previously eliminated vaccine-preventable infections, eventually leading to their return to endemic levels. The timing and critical threshold for returning to endemicity will differ substantially by disease, with measles likely to be the first to return to endemic levels and may occur even under current vaccination levels without improved vaccine coverage and public health response. These findings support the need to continue routine childhood vaccination at high coverage to prevent resurgence of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases in the U.S.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Nathan C. Lo, MD, PhD, email nathan.lo@stanford.edu.
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.
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The climate crisis contributes to increasing weather-driven disasters, but people adjust “disturbingly fast” to gradual temperature increases, leading to climate apathy.
A new UCLA study finds that presenting the same continuous climate data, such as incremental changes in temperature, in binary form — such as whether a lake did or did not freeze in the winter — significantly increases people’s ability to see the impact of climate change.
Making an emotional connection to the loss of local traditions may also help overcome climate apathy.
Slowing human-caused climate change requires decisive action, but the slow upward creep of global temperatures contributes to apathy among people who don’t experience regular climate-driven disasters, psychologists say. In a new study from UCLA and Princeton, researchers looked into ways to communicate the true impact of climate change and found a solution.
Showing people continuous data, such as temperature increases in a town, left people with a vague impression of gradual change, but showing binary data for the same town, specifically whether a lake froze or not each winter, brought home the striking shift, said incoming UCLA communications professor and cognitive psychologist Rachit Dubey.
“People are adjusting to worsening environmental conditions, like multiple fire seasons per year, disturbingly fast,” said Dubey, senior author of the study. “When we used the same temperature data for a location but presented it in a starker way, it broke through people’s climate apathy. Unfortunately, compared to those who looked at a clearer presentation of the same information, those who only looked at gradual data perceived a 12% smaller climate impact and cared less.”
Dubey studies how people reason about climate change, how to communicate about it and how to improve climate communications. He noted how heavily political and personal experiences influence risk perceptions around climate change, and how quickly people redefine “normal.” A Vox article reporting on climate apathy in 2020 inspired Dubey to look deeper into the human tendency to adjust to change, even as science has proven that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change and increasing disasters like wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, and sea-level rise.
“For years, we assumed that if the climate worsened enough, people would act, but instead, we’re seeing the ‘boiling frog’ effect, where humans continuously reset their perception of ‘normal’ every few years,” Dubey said. “People are adjusting to worsening environmental conditions, like multiple fire seasons per year, disturbingly fast. My research examines how people are mentally adapting to the negative changes in our environment.”
In the study, published April 17 in the journal Nature Human Behavior, the researchers first asked study participants about the climate in a fictional city they named “Townsville,” and later asked a second group about five real lakeside cities around the world, including Lake George in New York and Grand Traverse Bay in Michigan. In both versions of the experiment, the scientists showed half of the study participants a graph of temperature increases from 1940-2020, and the other half a graph showing whether temperatures caused the lake to freeze each winter. Whether charting temperatures or lake freezes, each pair of charts drew from the same slowly warming weather information. As temperatures gradually climbed, the lakes stopped freezing as often. For the real towns, study participants hearing about the lake also learned about the decline of activities like ice skating and ice fishing.
When the researchers asked participants to rate from 1 to 10 how much climate change impacted the town, people who learned about a range of temperatures responded lower than people who learned whether the lake froze — on average, 6.6, compared to 7.5, or 12% higher.
Making the emotional connection to local traditions, whether ice skating in the winter or freedom from wildfire smoke in the summer, may also contribute to overcoming apathy, said lead author Grace Liu, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University.
“Our study drives home the importance of discussing climate change not just in gradual temperature terms, but in concrete, either-or terms, showing how life has changed,” Liu said. “It’s not just warmer winters; it’s also a loss of ice hockey and white Christmases. It’s not just hotter summers; it’s the disappearance of a swimming hole due to drought or soccer practice (being) canceled because it’s dangerously hot.”
The researchers hope the results help anyone designing visual representations of climate change graphics or those seeking to clarify gradual changes, from climate generalists and data visualization professionals to policymakers and journalists.
“People working in these fields have a sense that binary data is more effective, and our study adds theoretical rigor, using careful cognitive experiments,” Dubey said. “Our study also helps explain why the ‘Show Your Stripes’ visualization is so compelling because it takes continuous data and presents it in a more binary format.”
By focusing on the increasing rate of once-rare events, like extreme heat days or thousand-year floods, or the slow loss of seasonal joys like skiing or outdoor ice skating, the researchers hope that the same temperature data that once led to public apathy can instead help communities care more about the climate crisis.
Journal
Nature Human Behaviour
New study finds link between green spaces and police violence
The first study to examine the relationship between greenness and police violence found that greener areas had fewer fatal police shootings. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign landscape architecture professor William Sullivan was part of the study.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
The first study to examine the relationship between the greenness of an area and police violence found that areas with a greater amount of green space had fewer fatal police shootings. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign landscape architecture professor William Sullivan and University of Hong Kong landscape architecture professor Bin Jiang were part of the study. Jiang received his doctoral degree at Illinois.
Credit: Photo by L. Brian Stauffer/University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A novel research project has shown that areas with greater amounts of green space have a lower prevalence of police violence. The study is the first to find a significant relationship between greenness levels and fatal police shootings, and it showed that the most socially and economically disadvantaged areas seemed to benefit the most from green spaces.
“It’s a novel discovery. We don’t know of anybody that’s explored this question,” said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign landscape architecture professor William Sullivan, who was part of the research team. “It opens a new line of research on an outcome that hardly anybody has thought about in terms of the benefits of greener places to live.”
The research team also included Bin Jiang, a landscape architecture professor at the University of Hong Kong who received his doctoral degree at Illinois; Jiali Li, a doctoral student advised by Jiang who was the project manager and main data analyst; and Matthew Browning, a former Illinois faculty member who is now the co-director of the Virtual Reality and Nature Lab at Clemson University.
The research, which was published by the journal “Environment and Behavior,” “suggests the quantity and quality of landscape matters for achieving safer neighborhoods and regions,” Jiang said.
The team collected data on green space and on fatal shootings by police officers from 3,100 counties in the U.S., including 805 metropolitan counties, over a 5-year period from 2016-2021. They also looked at social deprivation measures of disadvantaged communities to provide a larger social context. The social deprivation measures include poverty, educational levels, single-parent households, rental properties, overcrowded housing units, households without a car and employment rates for individuals under age 65.
“This research was rigorous and comprehensive, with extensive controls to account for other variables,” Sullivan said.
He said that he was initially skeptical that any relationship could be found between a space’s greenness and police shootings. Initial findings showed a negative relationship between greenness and police shootings and, he said, “to my astonishment, as the social deprivation score got higher, the relationship between greenness and police shootings got higher. That is, the greener the county, the fewer fatal police shootings at every level of social deprivation.”
The team considered hypotheses as to why this might be the case.
“We believe that higher levels of greenness can reduce violence through four major mechanisms: reduced crime, improved short-term and long-term mental health, sending a signal that a place is well-cared for and increasing the use of outdoor spaces by nearby neighbors,” Li said.
Previous research indicates that green spaces contribute to faster recovery from stress, better mental health and reduced levels of crime and violence, Sullivan said.
“People who are mentally fatigued have much greater challenges controlling impulses. They are more likely to miss subtle social clues, and they are more likely to be in a bad mood or aggressive,” he said.
“If a space is greener, police officers may feel a little less stressed themselves,” Sullivan said. “If that’s the case, they bring their better cognitive capacities to any engagement with the people that live in these communities, and they are more likely to bring their best professional skills to bear to de-escalate and avoid violence.”
Previous research also has shown that more greenness contributes to stronger ties among neighbors, who may spend more time outside socializing in a greener environment. This can increase civic engagement and informal surveillance of the neighborhood and make residents more inclined to resolve conflicts non-violently, the researchers said.
“When neighborhoods are greener, there is a stronger sense that somebody cares about this place and that it’s a safer place,” Sullivan said.
The type of greenness matters though. The researchers noted that some studies have found that green sites can become territory for gangs, and that people fear for their safety when vegetation limits visibility or provides hiding places for people engaged in illicit activity. It is not only the number of green spaces, but also their quality, that matters, Jiang said.
The study is a basis for further research. For example, the researchers said that fatal police shootings often are undercounted and the data they used didn’t include non-fatal police shootings. They said that further research is needed to understand the mechanisms behind the negative association between green spaces and police shootings, and what variables influence individuals versus groups.
The study provides additional evidence for the health-promoting effects of green spaces that city planners, real estate developers and landscape architects can use to show how investing in greener neighborhoods benefits a community, the researchers said.
“Adding green cover may be one of the least expensive interventions available to a community seeking to reduce violence. This could involve converting vacant lots into mini-parks or community gardens or implementing urban forestry programs,” Li said.
The researchers said that although green spaces are beneficial, reducing violence will require communities to also address systemic issues in the criminal justice system, implement community policing practices and provide training and support for police officers.
“We acknowledge that even if the greenness level in a community is related to fatal police shootings, a great deal more needs to be done to understand the case. We also acknowledge that addressing police shootings requires considerably more than planting trees and other forms of vegetation in neighborhoods,” they wrote.
The study found that metropolitan counties had a stronger association between greenness and the level of fatal police shootings, and areas with the most social deprivation had the strongest association and seemed to benefit the most from green spaces.
Jaili Li, a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong, was the main data analyst for the research project.
As federal science agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), face catastrophic cuts, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) today released a Statement summarizing the findings of a new Special Report on the U.S. Weather Enterprise. The statement and report — titled "Without a Strong Weather Enterprise, America's Economic Leadership is at Risk" — highlight the foundational role of federal agencies in supporting public safety, private sector operations, national security, and vital infrastructure.
The new AMS Statement summarizes the recommendations of the special report, which include maintaining a strong NOAA with adequate resources to maintain important scientific observations, sufficient staffing at the National Weather Service and NOAA Research, and critical infrastructure; restoring critically important Earth science research funding at NOAA, NSF, DOE, and NASA; and ensuring continued funding to collaborative research efforts between federal agencies and other partners such as universities.
The summary statement reads, in part, as follows:
"For decades, the United States has led the world in supplying weather information that provides for the protection of life and property and supports all segments of the nation’s economy. This success springs from the carefully constructed balance among the government, private, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and academic sectors working in weather — known collectively as the weather enterprise. Each sector depends critically on the work of the others so that together they efficiently and effectively serve the nation.
With the value of weather and climate information to the U.S. economy exceeding $100 billion annually (10 times the investment made by taxpayers), it is clear that a strong weather enterprise is essential to America’s economic leadership."
The summary statement continues:
"Critically, every facet of the success of the U.S. weather enterprise depends on the high-quality research, data, and services provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other federal agencies. Recent reductions in staffing and funding across federal agencies threaten the carefully established balance of the enterprise, placing the entire chain of observations, quality control, model forecasts, and decision support for the protection of life and property at risk.
A failure of these systems would be catastrophic, causing, for example, shorter tornado warning lead-time, more uncertainty in hurricane landfall intensity and location, and worse forecast of snowfall amounts — all of which will put the pocketbooks and lives of hard-working Americans at greater risk. Data delivery failures and worse forecasts also will create costly and dangerous delays for sensitive private sector systems and clients like power companies, transportation, real time risk management, and data farms. Further, the members of our U.S. Armed Forces regularly depend on timely, accurate weather forecast information underpinned by NOAA, meaning that any degradation of services could have disastrous consequences on their lives and to our national security.
Fewer upper-air observations that are critical to severe storm forecasting and canceled training for meteorologists who support forecast fire operations are just two examples of impacts that are already being felt. Other impacts will include deferred or canceled maintenance, upgrades, and preparations for the future, a loss of scientific progress and technological innovation, and an inability to build and retain a strong workforce — all of which threaten U.S. scientific and economic leadership.
... As hazardous weather events will always be a part of life in the United States and approximately one-third of the U.S. economy is sensitive to weather and climate, the continued efforts of the weather enterprise are crucial to enable American families, businesses, troops, and communities to prepare for and protect themselves from weather risks."
The summary statement concludes with three recommendations:
Recommendation 1: Maintain a strong NOAA with adequate resources to maintain scientifically curated, high-quality, foundational observations, to secure critical national data and computing infrastructure, and to restore sufficient staffing in the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), which will ensure protection of life and property and a more robust economy.
Recommendation 2: Restore critically important funding for Earth science research in NOAA, NSF, DOE, and NASA to support the development of new observing technologies and models (including AI modeling) within the agencies and through cooperative institutes and cooperative research and development agreements with private sector companies.
Recommendation 3: Ensure continued funding to university and other collaborative research efforts in atmospheric science to support the training of the next generation of leaders, the development of new technologies (e.g., those leveraging AI to improve models, products, and services), and the inclusion of social science research into severe weather events and community responses in support of commercial enterprise (e.g., the insurance and reinsurance industries).
Figure 2. The Federal agencies in the public sector,most notably NOAA but also NASA, NSF, USGS, DOE, and others, provide a foundational role in supporting the rest of the weather enterprise.
Credit
American Meteorological Society
About the American Meteorological Society
The American Meteorological Society advances the atmospheric and related sciences, technologies, applications, and services for the benefit of society. Founded in 1919, AMS has a membership of around 12,000 professionals, students, and weather enthusiasts. AMS publishes 12 atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic science journals; sponsors more than 12 conferences annually; and offers numerous programs and services. Visit us at https://www.ametsoc.org/.
Farms with more intensive management have lower soil functionality
Summary author: Walter Beckwith
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Soil health hinges more on how agricultural land is managed than whether the farming system is organic or conventional, according to a new study showing that farms with more intensive management have lower overall soil functionality. The findings argue that optimizing yield whilst lowering management intensity – what the authors call "productive deintensification" – may be a more sustainable path forward that could boost soil health across diverse farming practices. Soils play a critical role in supporting both human well-being and ecological stability. In agricultural soils, efforts to maximize crop yields can come at the cost of essential soil functions such as water retention and nutrient cycling. Intensive farming practices often degrade soil health by reducing organic carbon content and biodiversity, which are key to maintaining soil functionality. Organic farming is often considered to be more sustainable than conventional farming and is seen as a way to enhance soil health. However, benefits to soil health are likely driven by specific management practices – such as crop diversification, reduced tillage, and manure use – rather than by the overarching organic or conventional system used. Given the complexity of real-world farming, simply comparing these systems is insufficient. According to the authors, measuring management intensity as a continuous variable offers a more accurate and useful framework for promoting sustainable agriculture.
Here, Sophie van Rijssel and colleagues assessed how both farming type (organic vs. conventional) and management intensity affect soil multifunctionality (soil’s ability to perform multiple ecological functions) and the potential drivers underlying the effects. Sampling soils from 53 organic and conventional agricultural fields from across the Netherlands, van Rijssel et al. measured and combined various soil health and function indicators into a single score tailored to each soil type. Additionally, farm management intensity was quantified through farmer interviews and reflected practices like fertilizer use, tillage, and crop rotation. The analysis revealed that management intensity is a better predictor of soil multifunctionality than whether a farm was labeled organic or conventional. According to the findings, higher management intensity was associated with reduced multifunctionality, particularly in organic systems. The authors show that specific practices – particularly reduced use of inversion tillage and increased use of grass-legume cover crops – were key drivers of improved soil multifunctionality, with total soil organic carbon and bacterial biomass identified as the primary mechanisms underlying these effects.
